photography
Shows the actual product
The main image must show the exact item for sale — not a placeholder, a logo, a stock icon, line art, an illustration or a mockup (hardware, vehicles & parts and software are exceptions).
Required: The actual product · checked against the source on 2026-09-30
Required
The actual product
Severity: hard fail — the image is rejected
How we measure it
An AI vision model looks at a reduced copy of your image and answers a fixed set of questions — is anything in the frame besides the product, is it a real photograph, is the whole product in frame, is it in retail packaging, is it shown once, is a photorealistic person shown. It can mark a rule as passed or ask you to check it yourself — it never fails an image on its own. Where a rule also needs the file's metadata (like Amazon's tag for AI-generated people), we read it from the file you uploaded.
vision_review
Check your image against this rule
Your photo is checked against this rule and every other Google Merchant Center rule in one go.
Free · no signup · private to you
Source
Google Merchant Center Help: Image link [image_link]- Rule version
- v1
- Effective since
- 2026-09-30
- Last verified
- 2026-09-30
When the platform changes this requirement we publish a new version. Past verdicts keep pointing at the version they were checked against.
Version history
- v1 · 2026-09-30First published: The actual productGoogle disapproves placeholders, logos and illustrations used instead of a product photo.